Field
The present disclosure relates to communication networks. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a system and a method for facilitating rule-based network identifiers for separation of traffic in a tunnel.
Related Art
The exponential growth of the Internet has made it a popular delivery medium for a variety of applications running on physical and virtual devices. Such applications have brought with them an increasing demand for bandwidth. As a result, equipment vendors race to build larger and faster switches with versatile capabilities, such as efficient forwarding of multi-destination (e.g., broadcast, unknown unicast, and multicast) traffic. However, the capabilities of a switch cannot grow infinitely. It is limited by physical space, power consumption, and design complexity, to name a few factors. Furthermore, switches with higher capability are usually more complex and expensive. As a result, increasing efficiency in existing capabilities of a switch adds significant value proposition.
Typically, to expand a lower layer network across a higher layer network (e.g., an Ethernet network over an Internet Protocol (IP) network), a tunnel is established between two tunnel endpoints. If a device in a segment of a lower layer network cannot establish a tunnel, a tunnel gateway is used. A tunnel gateway can originate or terminate tunnels for the devices in that network segment. The tunnel gateway can be a distributed (or virtual) tunnel endpoint, which can be associated with a plurality of switches operating as a single, logical tunnel endpoint. A tunnel endpoint for a tunnel can originate or terminate tunnel forwarding for the tunnel.
While a distributed tunnel endpoint brings many desirable features in forwarding traffic via tunnels, some issues remain unsolved in facilitating the separation of traffic via a tunnel.